120 BULLETIN 76, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



or, proximally, the dorsolateral series, and less often, also, the carinal series, may be 

 quite irregular. In distorted dried examples the irregularity is unnaturally accen- 

 tuated. The carinal spines stand on every other plate, or sometimes on as many as 

 18 consecutive plates in large examples; but in a few equally large specimens (as with 

 R 80 mm.) the alternation of spiniferous and spinless plates is scarcely broken. These 

 spines are rather short, stout, tapering, and blunt-acute to subtruncate, sometimes 

 in old specimens slightly swollen terminally and are upward of 3 mm. long. The dorso- 

 lateral spines are still longer and the superomarginals subequal to the dorsolaterals, 

 or even a little longer (upwards of 4 mm.). The dorsal spines are not regularly 

 fluted, but are minutely roughened at the tip. In large specimens from La Jolla and 

 San Diego the carinal, dorsolateral, and some of the superomarginal spines may be 

 strongly compressed at the tip only, or may have one to three grooves at the slightly 

 expanded blunt extremity. Rarely a dorsolateral plate carries two or three spines. 

 On the disk there is a circle or pentagon of close-set spines enclosing 1 to 12, irregularly 

 placed. 



The superomarginal spines regularly stand on alternate plates, quite often oppo- 

 site the nearly equally numerous dorsolaterals to which they are subequal, or a trifle 

 longer. The spines are stout, tapering, bluntly pointed, sometimes in old and spiny 

 specimens compressed, or even expanded, truncate and slightly gouge-shaped. (San 

 Diego, No. 7473; La Jolla; Santa Catalina; Laguna Beach; in varying degrees.) 

 The terminal plate is large subcircular with a terminal armature of numerous short 

 spinelets. 



The intermarginal channel is fairly wide, but not quite so wide as the length of 

 the superomarginal spines. The in fero marginal spines, two to a plate in an oblique 

 series, are slightly tapered, flattened, truncate, with sometimes a poorly defined groove 

 on the outer, or upper, side near tip. The spines are subequal or the inner slightly 

 the shorter. 



Actinal plates small, corresponding to the inferomarginals, the series incom- 

 plete and of variable length, perhaps in relation to the age of the specimen. Small 

 examples usually lack actinal spines whereas in grown examples, from R 50 mm. on, 

 the spines are generally present, although an example with R 70 mm. has none, 

 while another with R 55 mm. has nine, extending nearly a third the length of ray (La 

 Jolla). The spines when best developed reach about to the middle of the ray with 

 upwards of 18 to the series (La Jolla). The condition of a specimen with unequal rays 

 is interesting. On a ray having R 67 mm., there are 13 and 14 spines reaching about 

 0.4 the length of ray, while on a ray with R 42 mm., there are no actinal spines. A 

 specimen with R 53 mm. from San Francisquito Bay, Lower California, has 15 actinal 

 spines the series ending in the middle of the ray. (See Variations.) The spines are 

 similar to the inferomarginals though considerably smaller, and stand in the same 

 oblique series. Actinal channel very narrow. 



Verrill writes (1914, p. 184) that the actinal plates are "sporadic, spineless" 

 and that the "species differs from Orthasterias calif arnica, and 0. columbiana, both 

 of which it resembles, in lacking peractinal spines." But his cotj^pe of gonolena 

 (No. 1825, M. C. Z.) from San Diego has a short series of from five to nine actinal 

 spines, while in a specimen (No. 1214, M. C. Z.) from the Gulf of California, with 

 R 45 mm., and listed on page 185, there are three to five small spines in the actinal 

 series. In the fragment of a ray that serves as a type of this species (40 mm. long 



